Congressman Stephen Lynch: I’m not afraid to take a stand

Wednesday

Aug 11, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 11, 2010 at 11:22 AM

Stephen Lynch was one of 34 Democrats in the House of Representatives to vote against the final health care bill, which angered many constituents. Lynch said his vote was not politically motivated and he wasn’t worried about reprisals.

“If I was fearful, I would’ve voted for it,” he said.

Watch video excerpt and disucss on our blog

Dan Atkinson / Staff Writer

When Stephen Lynch first ran for Congress in 2001, he said, he participated in 29 debates. That’s not going to happen this year.

“We’ll debate, I’m not sure it’ll be four times,” Lynch said, referring to a request from his opponent in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary, Mac D’Alessandro. “I would hope for more than one [debate].”

Lynch was speaking at an editorial board meeting with GateHouse Media and Wicked Local editors on Aug. 11. Among other topics, he discussed D’Alessandro, who’s challenging him for the 9th District seat, his vote against Obamacare and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lynch said he’s only met D’Alessandro four times but “he seems like a decent fellow.” That didn’t necessarily mean he would vote as D’Alessandro would should he lose the primary, though. When asked how he would vote in a lame duck session on an issue the two didn’t agree on, Lynch said he would follow his conscience like he normally does.

“I’ll use my best judgment,” he said. “You swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and represent the people … sometimes the problem is not necessarily the thought process of the individual holding the seat, it’s a problem of perception with the public. I represent 640,000 people in 19 towns and two cities, someone disagrees with me on every vote.”

He said D’Alessandro is beholden to the Service Employees International Union, where he serves as political director for New England.

“His view of the world is greatly shaped by who he works for,” Lynch said. “The SEIU had great financial gain in seeing this bill passed and his view is directly correlated to that.”

Watch video excerpt and disucss on our blog

Lynch was one of 34 Democrats in the House of Representatives to vote against the final health care bill, which angered many constituents. Lynch said his vote was not politically motivated and he wasn’t worried about reprisals.

“If I was fearful, I would’ve voted for it,” he said.

His fellow Democrats didn’t consider the long-term cost of the bill, he said.

“I think a fair number of them didn’t think far enough down the road about what this might require,” he said.

He was in favor of the House version of the bill, but the Senate version removed plans for a state-operated public option and taxed high-value plans regardless of the planholder’s income. A janitor making $40,000 and getting a high-value plan at Gillette would have to pay a separate tax at the end of the year.

Lynch said he couldn’t support those changes.

“At the end of the day, we took all the reform out,” he said.

He had particularly harsh words for insurance companies, who have a federal anti-trust exemption. The House bill would have repealed the exemption but that too was restored in the Senate bill.

Lynch said congressmen were powerless before the companies, and that they received a benefit by the government requiring 32 million people without insurance to get it.

“We were trying to negotiate against [the insurance companies] in this bill,” Lynch said. “They wanted the 32 million, we paid their ransom and left the hostages in the hands of the insurance companies.”

Congress could try again to repeal the anti-trust exemption, but Lynch said that was doubtful. Committee chairs have “pride of authorship” of the health care bill and would resist revisiting the issue on their own, he said.

“The public generates the impetus for certain issues,” he said. “I’m hearing some frustration, if that’s growing I think Congress could take it up.”

Lynch has frequently traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the House Committee on Oversight. He said his visits give a better picture of conditions on the ground than secondhand updates, recalling how he saw poorly-armored Humvees on his first trip to Iraq and worked to appropriate more money for armor.

He supports President Barack Obama’s plan to remove troops from Iraq, but was unsure how that would affect the Iraqi government’s stability and transition to democracy. However, that isn’t America’s problem.

“Those government problems, they have to sort them out themselves,” Lynch said. “That’s not why we’re there, we completed our objectives.”

Lynch also chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Post Office, and he’s opposed to the Postmaster General’s plan to save money by eliminate Saturday delivery. He favored closing some post offices to cut costs instead.

Another way to save money would be a online program to let citizens choose which mail gets physically delivered to their homes.

“You go on your computer and look at your mail, and you click on what you don’t want delivered,” Lynch said. “That’s the wave of the future.”

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